Moroccan Quinoa Salad

The thanksgiving weekend is over. It was our first thanksgiving ever and we did what all people in America do. Ate way too much. It turned out that one of David’s relatives lives in San Diego, and he invited us to celebrate a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner with him and his family. It was a fun experience and all the zillion different dishes tasted delicious. Although next year we will arrange it ourselves, we figure that we could try to make those pies without using so much sugar.

After all the indulging this weekend we wanted to make something light and fresh. We decided on this Moroccan Quinoa Salad. They would probably serve it with couscous in Morocco but we prefer quinoa as it is richer in protein and is gluten free.

Most Moroccan dishes calls for a whole cabinet of spices. Since we are traveling we don’t carry many spices with us and have therefore stripped it down to the most important ones. The key ingredient in this salad is mint. Together with cilantro and lemon it gives the quinoa its fresh taste, the cinnamon and raisins adds sweetness and the almonds makes it crunchy and salty.

Moroccan Quinoa SaladServes 4

If you don’t feel like marinating the zucchini and eggplant yourself you can find ready-made at most supermarkets (but nothing beats homemade).

Start by making the marinated vegetables. Spread out the zucchini and eggplant slices on a bbq, in a grill pan or in the oven, a couple of minutes on each side. Put them in a bowl, drizzle olive oil, garlic and salt over them and set aside.

Cook the quinoa according to the package but add one tbsp cinnamon in the water. When it’s done cooking, rinse and set aside to cool off. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon and add five tbsp of olive oil into the quinoa. Chop half of the mint leaves, half of the cilantro and all the raisins, throw them in the quinoa and toss it around until everything is mixed. Serve in bowls together with the marinated vegetables, avocado, spring onions, the rest of the mint and cilantro and the roasted almonds.

I’m so glad you all are traveling! I remember my own time of being on the road, and pining for a way to conveniently keep olive oil, garlic, and a few spices. So glad to see that you’re making it work!

And please – more beautiful pictures! I love to see how you see my part of the country.

Wow. This looks absolutely perfect. I want to eat it right this second, except it’s 10:23 pm and I don’t have the right ingredients.
I don’t even like quinoa really. But I think I’ll have to make an exception here.

This looks really good. About a year ago I had what was called a Moroccan Salad at California Pizza Kitchen. I remember it had mint, almonds, dried cranberries and chunks of roasted acorn squash. I really gotta go back there on of these days to try and recreate this.

Your recipe is sort of a great jumping off point and way of putting together Moroccan flavors whether you’re using them in a salad, a soup or a stew.

Hi Denise!
It’s true that you can use these flavors to create all kind of different Moroccan dishes, even though I might consider adding spices like turmeric, ginger, cumin, saffron, harissa and maybe Ras El Hanout in a stew. Thinking about it, I actually have a great Moroccan Tagine recipe that I will share as soon as we are back in our Swedish kitchen (where we keep all these spices).
/David

This salad looks wonderful. Since I started using quinoa, I have been exposed to so many new flavors and ingredients. I am imagining how the cinnamon and the mint and the raisins will all come together and I can’t wait to try this.

I’m a sucker for a bowl, but have really only had the rice or noodle variety. I adore quinoa and think this is a terrific idea – beautifully photographed as usual. Glad you had an American Thanksgiving, just wish you could have been our guests as there is plenty of veg fare in our house!

Your “Moroccan” quinoa salad loks great, but I have another for you:
the one in my book, Couscous: Fresh and Flavorful Contemporary Recipes. I developed a Vietnamese Couscous Salad that can rival your interpretation! And it was “invented” in our beautiful San Diego.
Bismillah,

This is an awesome recipe! In Japan, we have a similar style of dish made with rice and a bunch of different pairings. Considering how much I love quinoa, I can’t wait to try this out! Thanks for the beautiful inspiration :)

I made this salad last night and it was absolutely incredible. The flavours work SO well together. I love the subtle sweetness to it with the cinnamon and raisins and mint. It really does tick both the “delicious” and “nourishing” boxes. Gosh I could have just kept eating it…

I just made this last night and get the joy of eating it as leftovers for lunch today… And this is definitely going into my recipe repertoire. Although, I recommend cooking the raisins into the quinoa so they plump up nicely. I also subbed in 1/2 the almonds for baked cod and it turned out great!

Looks so lovely & inspiring, with fresh, clean flavours and presented soo beautifully. I can’t wait to taste it – I’ll be making it for a birthday picnic next weekend.
Ron, just a guess but it’s not unusual to rinse grains (or seeds in this case) when using them in cold salads to remove any extra starches that would make them stick & clump together.

I am in love with this recipe!!! With the vegi sushi salade, it is our top favorites vegi dishes! Every body loves it: from my partner (ok, he is a vegetarian) till my (very difficult eating) seven year old daughter, including my two teenage (meat lovers) boys!
Thank you for your wonderfull recipes! It makes me feel so mindful preparing them, and I enjoy every bite!
I recommand your app to every body I know in the Nederlands!!!

This is a very attractive website with some lovely healthy food but I can never find a similar website that actually gives calories and fats and carbs and proteins. Just a calorie amount would be useful but a person often has to take a guess with these websites. Its seems healthy people eat a lot of fruits and grains (non-gluten of course) and I bet the calorie counts are really quite high. Whatever works for us as individuals of course.

I love quinoa but there are some major issues caused by the recent rise in popularity. Here is one of many articles on the subject. It is two pages, make sure to read the second page. (Sorry to ruin quinoa for some of you out there!)

This recipe is amazing the only change I made was cooking the quinoa with 1/2 fresh organic carrot juice and 1/2 water.The leftovers were delicious for breakfast. I have just started reading your blog and love it so much I purchased your book (UK edition)and can’t wait to receive it.
Greetings from Seattle, WA

It was pretty good! Thanks for this nice lunch salad! It seemsed to be super healthy and that’s amazing! I’m recovering from anorexia and I guess I need healthy fats. Almonds + avocado – so it’s like perfection! Thanks.